"The BBC has owned up to a “nominal fee” programming scandal in which viewers of 15 editorial programmes were hoodwinked by “serious” conflicts of interest of programme makers and a failure to declare that documentaries had outside sponsors.

The programmes were made for “low or nominal cost” but many were heavyweight documentaries on controversial environmental issues and the BBC Trust, the corporation’s governing body, said today it was “deeply concerned” by the findings. Mark Thompson, the director general of the BBC, has ordered the organisation to tighten its systems for commissioning current affairs programmes. The broadcasting regulator Ofcom announced today that it was launching an investigation into the affair."

[...]

"The findings uncover a disturbing culture of broadcasting documentaries - for which the BBC had paid next to nothing - on the corporation’s international channel BBC World. The BBC was also found to have made programmes with “inappropriate” sponsorship funding from international organisations including UNESCO, UNEP, UNDP and UNFAO, in breach of the corporation’s guidelines.

The Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee warned that documentary makers may have been unduly influenced by their financial backers. “There was a suggestion that commercial, financial or other interests may have influenced the editorial judgments in these programmes,” it concluded.

Richard Ayre, who chaired the meeting of the Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee said: "International audiences must be able to rely on the same integrity and independence in the BBC's editorial decisions as audiences in the UK.

"We have found that several programmes shown on the BBC's World News channel had been inappropriately sponsored, and in the case of one of the independent producers, FBC Media (UK) Ltd, there was at least a suggestion that the company had a conflict of interest of which the BBC had been unaware.

"The Trust is deeply concerned at this and we very much regret that these programmes failed to live up to the editorial standards we set for the BBC.”

An audit of BBC World programmes uncovered a series of current affairs programmes that – in breach of guidelines – had been funded by corporate sponsorship, which was often not declared."

"Perhaps most damning is the fact that a BBC World documentary about climate change was sponsored by green crusaders Envirotrade. And of course “Envirotrade was featured in a positive light in the programme but viewers were unaware that there was a funding arrangement in place.” The BBC have ruled “that commercial, financial or other interests may have influenced the editorial judgments in these programmes.”

End excerpt.

Now, the Gang Green is eternally claiming that "deniars" are paid shills of Big Oil, yet who is doing the paying here? The BBC has been solidly in the tank for AGW from the get-go, and now it turns out they were making money for advocacy. At minimum, this illustrates the lie that media is objective.